Infrastructure Industries slow in April

The eight core industries with a combined weight of around 37.9 per cent in broader IIP slowed to 2.3 per cent in April 2013, from 3.2 per cent in the preceding month and a much higher 5.7 per cent in the fiscal 2013, which had seen an overall deterioration as the fiscal progressed. The consolidated index of the core industries had expanded 5.4 per cent in April two years back and 9.9 per cent in the first month of fiscal 2011.Electricity, the main industry infrastructure and coal, the principal fuel item, increased 3.1 per cent in April, retarding from their respective rates of 5.4 per cent and 5.9 per cent a year ago. Petroleum refinery increased 5.6 per cent in April, a third of the 21 per cent a year ago, though the feat meant keeping the pace of the preceding month. Natural gas was in deeper red, even as petroleum crude oil and fertilizer production declined less, compared to their respective year ago feat. Offshore crude oil production declined 3.4 per cent, whereas that of onshore increased by around one per cent during the month. In natural gas offshore production declined 22 per cent and onshore marginally. Production at IOCL declined 9.9 per cent, BPCL 20 per cent and RIL (Jamnagar) 2 per cent, whereas HPCL (27 per cent); and CPCL and Essar Oil (Vadinar) (22-23 per cent) showed increase during April. RIL (SEZ) taken on prorated basis did not show any change.

Core Industries performance (% increase)
	April		April-March
	2012	2013	2011-12	2012-13
Coal	5.9	3.1	1.3	3.4
Crude Oil	-1.4	-1.2	1.0	-0.6
Natural Gas	-11.3	-17.4	-8.9	-14.5
Refinery Products	20.8	5.6	3.1	8.6
Fertilizers	-9.3	-2.4	0.4	-3.4
Steel	2.3	1.9	10.3	2.5
Cement	12.5	8.3	6.7	9.3
Electricity	5.4	3.1	8.1	4.0
Total for above industries	5.7	2.3	5.0	3.2

The growth rate in cement production dropped to 8.3 per cent from 12.5 per cent a year ago, even as the performance was at par with that in the preceding month. The growth rate in alloy, non-alloy steel production fell to 1.9 per cent from 6.6 per cent in the preceding month and 2.3 per cent in April last year.

Revision of petroleum refinery and cement indices:
By the way, index numbers for 2012-13 have been revised noticeably for cement and petroleum refinery products as a result of which the revised annual growth rate for cement works out to 9.3 per cent against 5.6 per cent earlier; and petroleum refinery products 8.6 per cent against 6.9 per cent earlier. This has pushed up the annual growth rate for consolidated index for the core industries to 3.2 per cent (2.6 per cent).

The revision in cement production index has pushed up the growth rate in eleven out of 12 months of the fiscal 2012-13.The revision in the index for petroleum refinery products pertains to only April 2012 during the fiscal because of inclusion of RIL (SEZ) production, which earlier was not covered in the statistics.

The refinery production data for the month of April, 2013 and April, 2012 for RIL (SEZ) (refining capacity: 29 mmt) has been furnished by the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas on “prorated basis”, says the press release on infra industries. The inclusion has pushed up the growth rate for the petroleum refinery products to 20.8 per cent in April 2012, from only 0.6 per cent assessed earlier. Apparently, the index numbers for petroleum refinery output for subsequent months would also include production from RIL (SEZ), and this would likely result in revision in the relevant index numbers and the growth rates for these months.